Who is Keith Ellison?

In his Wall Street Journal column earlier this year, Jeryl Bier reported that Minnesota Fifth District Rep./Democratic National Committee Vice Chairman Keith Ellison and Nation of Islam Supreme Leader Louis Farrakhan had a reunion of sorts in September 2013 with a follow-up meeting in Farrakhan’s hotel room when Farrakhan visited Washington in 2015. I noted Ellison’s responses in “Ellison speaks…a little” and “Ellison speaks…a little more.” Ellison subsequently appeared as »

As Congress’s first Muslim and the Democratic National Committee’s Vice Chair, Minnesota Fifth District Rep.Keith Ellison has become a national figure. Minneapolis sits squarely within Ellison’s district. If you get your news from Minneapolis’s Star Tribune, however, you wouldn’t know much that Ellison doesn’t want you to know about him. At some point I should think professional pride would kick in to motivate the paper’s political reporters, but I’m still »

In his Wall Street Journal column a week ago yesterday, Jeryl Bier reported that Minnesota Fifth District Rep./Democratic National Committee Vice Chairman Keith Ellison and Nation of Islam Supreme Leader Louis Farrakhan had a reunion of sorts in September 2013: The occasion was a visit by Iran’s newly elected President Hassan Rouhani to the United Nations. Mr. Rouhani invited Muslim leaders from around the U.S. to dinner after addressing the »

In his Wall Street Journal column this past Friday, Jeryl Bier reported that Minnesota Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison and Nation of Islam Supreme Leader Louis Farrakhan had a reunion of sorts in September 2013: The occasion was a visit by Iran’s newly elected President Hassan Rouhani to the United Nations. Mr. Rouhani invited Muslim leaders from around the U.S. to dinner after addressing the U.N. General Assembly. Contemporaneous news »

Minnesota Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison is now the Vice Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He’s not some inconsequential backbencher from flyover land. He embodies the alliance of radical Islam and the Democratic Party. He signifies. We’ve been covering him since he secured the DFL nomination to succeed 14-term incumbent Martin Sabo in the spring of 2006. For public purposes since then Ellison has denounced and disassociated himself from »

Edward-Isaac Dovere reported in Politico yesterday that Minnesota Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison is exploring a run for Minnesota Attorney General. Dovere confirmed his story with four acquaintances of Ellison with whom Ellison has discussed the possibility. Dovere adds that Ellison “has indicated to several people close to him in recent days that he’s less likely to run,” although Ellison still “finds the idea enticing.” In addition to serving in »

Keith Ellison is Minnesota’s Fifth District Congressman and the Democratic Party’s deputy chairman. We’ve followed his rise since he won the DFL nomination to run for the Fifth District seat in 2006 in “Louis Farrakhan’s first congressman” (October 9, 2006), in the companion Power Line post “Keith Ellison for dummies,” and in “The Ellison elision” (February 3, 2014). Most recently, I revisited this history in the context of Ellison’s national »

In the adjacent post I took a look at the hateful Twitter stylings of Minnesota Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison’s press secretary Isaiah Breen. Breen describes himself on his Twitter profile as Ellison’s former press secretary. Corresponding with Breen in an exchange subsequently posted on Twitter, the Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo confirmed that Breen “had not been fired for sending the series of sarcastic Tweets.” Calling Ellison’s office early this »

Minnesota Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison is no longer just a backbencher in the House of Representatives and he is no longer just a Minnesota story, if he ever was. As the first Muslim elected to Congress, his ascent to the House of Representatives was covered around the world in 2006. Now he is also the deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee. I believe that Ellison is a leading »

I’ve been writing about Keith Ellison since he was endorsed by the DFL Fifth District convention to succeed Rep. Martin Sabo in the spring of 2006. I wrote some 20 Power Line posts under the heading “Who is Keith Ellison?” I summarized my findings in the Weekly Standard article “Louis Farrakhan’s first congressman” and in the companion Power Line post “Keith Ellison for dummies.” When Ellison published his 2014, memoir »

RealClearPolitics executive editor Carl Cannon comes to the defense of DNC chairman wannabe Keith Ellison in an Orange County Register column in which he finds Ellison the victim of “the character assassination that’s now a permanent feature of our politics.” Cannon has an arguable point to make about the necessity of civility and good faith in our politics. Although the point is arguable, it is misapplied to the case of »

Minnesota’s own Keith Ellison is the DNC chairman wannabe with a past. He’s a past and long-time local advocate of the Nation of Islam who claims not to have picked up on the doctrines of the hate cult until well into his tenure. Since he abandoned the Nation of Islam and turned or returned to Islam, Ellison has been a friend of CAIR and other radical Islamist front groups such »

I wrote the Weekly Standard article “Louis Farrakhan’s first congressman” and posted the companion Power Line post “Keith Ellison for dummies” in October 2006, when Ellison was on the verge of election to Congress representing Minnesota’s Fifth District. The latter piece includes some of the basic documents supporting my narrative of Ellison’s long association with the Nation of Islam. I was provoked to write these pieces by the poor job »

Working from public documents and my own interviews in 2006, I constructed a picture of Keith Ellison as a serious long-time advocate of the Nation of Islam. This is the picture I drew of Ellison in “Louis Farrakhan’s first congressman” and in the companion Power Line post “Keith Ellison for dummies” just before his election to Congress in 2006. Ellison’s past and his continuing deceptions about it have emerged anew »

Speaking at a gathering of Democrats in Denver last week, Keith Ellison argued that he could both represent Minnesota’s Fifth District in the House and lead the Democratic National Committee if elected its chairman. “All there is to do is to vote ‘no,’” Ellison explained, vowing that he would spend “every other moment” working for the party. No comment was sought from Ellison’s Democratic colleagues in the Minnesota congressional delegation. »

Alan Dershowitz thinks that Keith Ellison is just the man to lead the Democratic Party — if you want to bury the Democrats. On that point, he agrees with many Power Line readers on Ellison’s candidacy to to chair the DNC. In the video below, Professor Dershowitz expounds on what he sees as Ellison’s — what’s the word? — “weaknesses” as a prospective party leader. Professor Dershowitz argued his case »